Sunday, April 24, 2005

Assembling a list of local bloggers, spending several hours in the process

To see what Victoria bloggers are writing now, click here (old site). Then come on back for the why and how.

I wanted a complete list of bloggers in my city (Victoria BC). Not only that, I wanted a real-time display of what everybody in this town was writing. I found a great service called Blogdigger Groups that lets me combine several blogs into a single webpage. All I had to do now was to find all the bloggers in my city.

It took me several hours just to scratch the surface.

Some of the sources I used to find local blogs were: GeoURL, Blogger, and a good ol' fashioned Google search. And of course you have to check out the people on the blogrolls in case they live here too. Sigh. And I stopped short of adding Xanga blogs (456 Victoria blogs to plow through -- many by people in their early teens).

Anyway, the final result is here: a webpage combining the feeds of 109 Victoria bloggers. Also available as a feed, or if you want to import all 109 (!) blogs into your aggregator, an OPML file. Anyone is free to add or remove blogs using the Edit link.

29 Comments:

Very interesting Jon. I poked around for quite a while and will recheck the 'blog' again. I linked to the post here

I have a question though. I checked the list after I posted at fm. The latest post was"3 hours, 55 minutes ago Scraping the Web" and the timer continued when I hit reload but my post didn't show up. What is the lists lead time? Should it be updated almost instantly or over a period of hours?

Jon - yey I showed up. As somebody said we could just go to an aggregator but it is fun to experiment.

My 'missing post' showed up in the right timeslot (between two other blogs) after I changed to 'short' feeds as opposed to complete ones. The length of feed may or may not have had a bearing on things. The time drag seems to be about 8 - 12 hours (?) but this may be due to the number of feeds the blog is trying to aggregate.

Great idea, Jonathan. Found my way here via your comment on my site. I also read Firemind and the rest of you are meeting up for Victoria blogger gatherings. When and where is the next one?...I'd like to attend.

Hi Jeff - Good to hear from ya. Victoria Bloggerati gatherings happen on the 3rd Wednesday of each month. I've asked Todd (the organizer) if he would add you to the list of people to notify about the next meeting.

Hi Jon. Neat idea! I saw your comment on my friend Grant's blog. My also-in-Victoria blog is at http://scwink.squarespace.com - even if you don't want to link to me, I'd love to hear more about the Victoria Bloggerati!

Hi scwink -- Of course I'll link ya ... as soon as Blogdigger comes back up. The Victoria Bloggerati is organized by Todd Brill, and it happens on the third Wednesday of each month. Send me your email and I will give you his!

Oh wait, scratch the Lisa Sweeney link...she was a student in Victoria, but it is back home in Vancouver indefinitely. Oh, and like Non Zero, Crabs in Vegas is friend born and raised in Victoria, but now studying in Las Vegas as well as Bamfield, so not sure if that fits the Victoria Blogger description.